Teen on Trial in Slayings Says She Feared for Her Life

A Lancaster teenager said she thought she was going to die and denied involvement in a triple homicide in northwest Arizona in 1996.

“I thought I was going to be killed,” Kimberly Lane, 16, testified Friday in the trial underway here for her alleged involvement in the August 1996 slaying of Robert Delahunt. The 15-year-old was beaten and stabbed and his throat was slashed.

Lane said co-defendants Frank Anderson, 50, of Lancaster, and Robert “Bobby” Poyson, 21, of Golden Valley, Ariz., killed the boy and that she was not involved.

At previous trials Anderson and Poyson were convicted of killing Delahunt; his mother, Leta Kagen, 37; and Kagen’s boyfriend, Roland Wear, 50.

The state is seeking the death penalty for the men in pending sentencing proceedings.

Lane was 14 at the time of the slayings and, although she is too young under Arizona law to face a death sentence, she could spend the rest of her life in prison if convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy and armed robbery.

Lane and Anderson left Lancaster in July 1996, bumming rides and bus fare until they ended up in Arizona in August. They were directed by a stranger named Gene to Golden Valley, where they met Poyson, a tenant in a remote trailer owned by Kagen. The woman had a reputation for providing food and shelter for the unfortunate and homeless.

Lane testified Friday she first heard Anderson and Poyson talking about tying up their hosts and stealing Wear’s truck on the second day of her stay.

“I thought they were joking around, you know,” she said. “I thought, ‘They’re just crazy.’ ”

Lane testified that Delahunt overheard the men at one point and that they told the boy he could leave with them if he kept quiet. Lane said the men later told her they needed her help to scare Delahunt so he would not tell Kagen and Wear.

“Still I didn’t believe them,” she said. “I thought it was a game.”

She said Anderson and Poyson directed her to begin kissing Delahunt in a small camp trailer and that they would interrupt them and scare him.

She said the boy was kissing her cheek when Anderson, armed with a knife, advanced and the bloodshed began.

“The way the knife was coming down, I couldn’t tell if it was coming toward me or Delahunt,” Lane testified. “I was hysterical. I was screaming.”

She said Poyson then entered the trailer.

“Poyson was yelling [to Delahunt], ‘It’s a joke. It’s a joke. It’s just a joke.’ Then I heard Frank say, ‘It’s too late. I already cut him.’ ”

Lane said that was when she realized Delahunt was being killed, and she denied the prosecution’s argument that she was aware of the specifics of the plot and participating all along.

Lane testified she ran and hid in a nearby chicken coop.

“I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help myself,” she said.

Asked why she didn’t go to Kagen and Wear for help, Lane said she was afraid because Anderson and Poyson had previously threatened her life.

She said she returned about 20 or 30 minutes later to the camp trailer, and Poyson, in a “high-pitched, mean-streak voice,” ordered, “Get me a rock now!”

Lane told the jury she brought a fist-sized rock that Poyson rejected, ordering her to get a larger one, which she did. Lane said she didn’t know what the men planned to do with the rock.

The prosecution contends that the larger rock was used to pound a knife into Delahunt’s head.

Cross-examination of Lane is expected to begin Tuesday morning. The defense said one or more Lancaster residents and a psychologist may testify before attorneys present closing arguments.